Cemetery

(Garden in repose)

A light frost blooms on terracotta pots
Summer’s geraniums stand white-faced,
shocked stiff, unable.
Spider knitting hangs lank too,
then glistens briefly
at the first shaft of sun.
Our three squirrels grumble
busily at the empty feeders,
offering unimpressed stares
towards my steaming coffee mug reflection.

The garden has become a cemetery
of unburied lifeless visitors
that shared my salad days
of mottled warmth and dew
but now pay the price,
prone, sacrificial, destitute.
Copper leaves dance no longer,
matted between barren stems
crucified by this sudden chill
twisted, caught like rotting fish
in cobweb nets.

There is no life here
in these slatted shadows,
there is no pulse.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2016